Statement on Conviction of Egyptian Politician Ayman Nour

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
The White House
December 24, 2005

The United States is deeply troubled by the conviction today of Egyptian politician Ayman Nour by an Egyptian court. The conviction of Mr. Nour, the runner-up in Egypt's 2005 presidential elections, calls into question Egypt's commitment to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law. We are also disturbed by reports that Mr. Nour's health has seriously declined due to the hunger strike on which he has embarked in protest of the conditions of his trial and detention.

The United States calls upon the Egyptian government to act under the laws of Egypt in the spirit of its professed desire for increased political openness and dialogue within Egyptian society, and out of humanitarian concern, to release Mr. Nour from detention.

Ending the Silent War in Egypt

By Hala Mustafa
The Washington Post
December 24, 2005; A17

CAIRO -- While much attention has been paid to the violent attacks and intimidation directed at the opposition during Egypt's recent parliamentary elections, the involvement of the country's security forces in political life is not limited to this sort of visible confrontation. The real threat of Egypt's state security apparatus, as in many other Middle Eastern states, is that it continues to secretly manipulate the entire political system. American and domestic efforts to promote political reform in the region will achieve only cosmetic changes, of the kind we've seen so far, unless this clandestine chokehold is broken.

In Egypt, it is no secret that the security services are deeply involved in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), selecting high-level officials and most of the party's candidates for elections. As a result, in the recent parliamentary elections, many official NDP candidates were defeated by party dissidents who ran as independent candidates. Nominees of the secret police, it turns out, aren't popular with voters.

Even the NDP Policies Committee -- established three years ago as the party's vehicle for reform -- could not escape the clutches of the security services, which promoted a group of phony reformers to positions of influence and visibility in a false response to America's call for political change. Meanwhile, genuine liberal voices were excluded, making reform from within impossible. Such practices are not limited to the highest ranks of the party: Recruitment for all positions is based on loyalty to

security authorities rather than merit, qualifications, political background or experience.

The media are subjected to the same control. Even private, independent papers are held hostage to the security services, which have the power to license and shut down any newspaper and which exercise similar control over the granting of licenses to journalists. The same goes for TV stations -- including al-Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored satellite channel, which is supposed to be providing uncensored news from an American point of view.

From the beginning, al-Hurra's operation in Egypt was subject to the covert control of the security services, a fact that is not always apparent to those who oversee the station from Washington. The services have close ties to some of the station's directors and handpick many correspondents. They even have final say over which guests appear on programs. As a result, anyone who has paid careful attention to the tone and opinions of the regular programming will notice that liberal, progressive, open-minded views are presented almost apologetically. While al-Hurra is supposed to be a vibrant, fresh forum for freedom, it has failed to provide a real space for balanced views, and so it has been incapable of competing with

the "Islamic" al-Jazeera and "pan-Arabist" al-Arabiya channels.

Unless the security services are reined in, real political change and efforts to implement "reform from within" will continue to be blocked in Egypt and across the Middle East. The enlightened political elite will remain powerless, individuals who can make genuine contributions will be systematically targeted, moderate groups and trends will continue to be excluded, and most citizens will remain absent from political life (as was unfortunately demonstrated in the recent elections, in which the overwhelming majority of Egyptians did not vote). In a word, the political arena will still echo only one voice.

The "silent war" waged by the security services will keep Egypt stuck at square one, caught between the closed, security-obsessed regime and the Islamic fundamentalists. Is that the future we desire?

The writer is editor of the Al-Ahram Foundation's quarterly journal al-Dimuqratia (Democracy).

Pictures Of The Year 2005 (5)

A mosque stands alone among the tsunami devastated area on the West coast Aceh province in January 2005.

U.S. Shelves Arabic `Propaganda' Mag

Tried to improve America's image But critics derided it as not credible
by Tim Harper
Toronto Star
December 23, 2005

WASHINGTON—There is sadness in the Arab world today among NASCAR fans, aficionados of U.S. men's fashions and those seeking more information on Washington's healthy eating pyramid or American dating standards.

The U.S. state department announced yesterday it was suspending publication of Hi Magazine, its glossy, monthly attempt to win the hearts and minds of young Arabs, part of a communications troika it established following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In saying 'bye to Hi, the state department acknowledged the dialogue it had sought with the Arab world had become a one-way conversation.

The magazine had been derided by commentators in the Arab world as "schlock'' or "brainwashing'' and one had dubbed it the CIA's official publication.

The decision to suspend publication was made by Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the fast-talking former adviser and political spinner for fellow Texan George W. Bush.

"The state department is conducting a review of its Arabic-language magazine, Hi, to assess whether the magazine is meeting its objectives effectively,'' said spokesperson Sean McCormack.

The U.S. government has been spending $4.5 million (U.S.) annually since July 2003, trying to bring its own particular take on American life to a target Arab demographic aged 18-35.

Along with Al-Hurra TV and Radio Sawa, Hi was a three-pronged $62 million (U.S.) annual effort to counter anti-Americanism in countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and others.

"Like other parts of our new diplomatic effort, it was not seen as something credible,'' said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations.

"It was seen as propaganda and it wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing. The very fact that it was being published by our government meant it had two strikes against it from the beginning.''

Hughes has first-hand knowledge of the difficulty in selling American standards in the Arab world. When she spoke about women's rights before 700 Saudi Arabian women in September, she was told that contrary to what Washington kept saying, Saudi women were happy.

When Hughes questioned whether they should have the right to drive, one woman asked why she would want to drive when she had a driver.

The magazine also had to overcome Arab anger over the Iraqi occupation and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and allegations of maltreatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

McCormack said the magazine's website will remain, but the magazine never expanded its circulation. Of the 55,000 copies distributed, only 2,500 were purchased on any given month, the state department said.

The Arab press was replete with stories of untouched stacks of the magazine at kiosks in major cities.

"It costs $4.5 million annually,'' McCormack said. "I don't know what that averages out to per month, but you save money while you're actually not publishing it.''

Shortly after it hit the Arab street, the Al-Ahram Weekly in Egypt wrote, "many critics think the magazine is too naive to be anything other than an exercise in brainwashing.''

After a couple of issues, the U.S.-based Middle East Report weighed in.

"At a time when the U.S. really ought to be engaging in frank dialogue and genuine debate about ideas with people from the Middle East, it is hard to imagine Hi failing more spectacularly.''

One recent issue featured an article on male grooming that began: "These days, more and more men use skin moisturizers. In fact, some of them, like Michael Gustman, a 25-year-old public relations account executive from Boca Raton, Florida, even have separate moisturizers for the face and body. Facial pores can clog with too heavy a salve, it seems.''

In a piece entitled "Work Versus Family," Arab readers were told: "American women have never had more freedom to choose their life paths. But with choice comes pressure — and options.''

When the magazine was launched, Christopher Datta of the state department said it would counter disinformation or distorted images of America in the Arab world.

No News is Bad News

A Short History of Radio Free Iraq
By LILA RAJIVA
CounterPunch
December 21, 2005

Just as President Bush urged support for a "free, independent and responsible Iraqi media," the Los Angeles Times reported recently that the military in Iraq is spending millions on a DC- based defense contractor to plant stories favorable to the US occupation in the Iraqi media. Senior Pentagon officials, including General Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are said to have had no idea that this secret campaign was going on.

Ho hum. Is this even news? We're told that operatives (or if you will, troops) of an Information Operations Task Force in Baghdad write news stories, called "storyboards," and deliver them to the Iraqi staff of the Lincoln Group. These staffers translate the story-boards into Arabic and then pay (i.e. bribe) newspaper editors in Baghdad to run the stories.

It's good that the LA Times has come up with this. But had they been half as zealous in the last few years they would know that one way or another this "new" program has been around for a time, only with different names.

After the fall of Baghdad, Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a defense contractor with no media experience, got a no-bid contract for the Iraqi Media Network (IMN) program. Seems it was picked solely for its resume as a long-time buddy of the US military. In 2002, about two thirds of its 6 billion dollar revenues came largely from the defense budget and David Kay, chief hunter for WMD, is a former Veep.

TV producer Dan North was approached to set up a public broadcast station. But North soon became disillusioned when he found that his boss, Paul Bremer couldn't tell the difference between independent Iraqi journalism and PR for the US military. North, a veteran of Vietnam, Bosnia, Rumania, and Afghanistan and his news director, an Iraqi ex-pat, Achmed Al-Rikabi, a former Swedish producer/ reporter and BBC broadcaster, knew quite well what the Iraqis needed after years of state-controlled blather. Instead, they found themselves dishing out Bremer's blather. The Iraqis naturally tuned out and began listening to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Iraqi journalists started calling the Americans "Little Saddams."

So General Pace's stupefaction about the fake news story is touching.

And absurd. Last year, the IMN (its local name is Al Iraqiya) had a $100 million budget that came right out of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, the group in Defense that handles psy-ops.

Pace, Chief of the JCS, does not know this?

The unholy blending of psyops, information ops and military diplomacy was roundly criticized at the time even by military commanders who thought it would eventually ruin the army's ability to communicate with the public, but it went ahead anyway in mid- September 2004 under Erv Lessel, of the Strategic Communications office, but ultimately under the Undersecretary for Defense Policy, who was at the time Douglas Feith. Feith, meanwhile, also headed the Office of Special Plans (OSP) that "stove-piped" cooked intelligence to the White House to support the war and OSP itself was simply the brand new moniker under which the defunct Office of Strategic Information (OSI) was resurrected. Formed after 9-11, OSI did nothing but plant fake stories in the international (not just Iraqi) media until it was shut down from public outrage.

But Pace knows nothing about this.

I suppose he also knows nothing about a secret 74-page directive called "Information Operations Road Map," (late 2003) that invited proposals for a "director of central Information" who would be responsible for controlling all public or secret messages across all national security and foreign policy operations. That was presented to a "senior Pentagon panel" including none other than Dough Feith.

A "senior Pentagon panel" would, one suspects, include General Pace, who is now in a swoon about the LA Times report.

There is even a whole field devoted to this blending of military and psyops. It's called Defense Support for Public Diplomacy.

Back to the Iraqi PBS (perhaps not such a bad analogy, by the way, considering recent reports of the infiltration of PBS and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting by the pro-war faction). In January 2004, after mounting complaints about SAIC's no-bid contract, inexperience and bias, Harris Communications, a company that specializes in designing, manufacturing and installing communications equipment and infrastructure, took over the IMN contract. It was also a no-bid contract. Harris also had no media experience except for a stint upgrading Romania's media network. But perhaps that was enough.

Harris subcontracted the media work to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation and Al Fawares, an Iraqi owned Kuwaiti company which publishes the Al Sabah newspaper in Kuwait. Even so, under Harris (an Australian firm), American government influence was so heavy-handed that the entire staff of Al Sabah walked out and the Iraqi general director of Al Iraqiya (the Iraqi TV network) resigned after just 6 months.

But senior Pentagon officials wouldn't know that.

They also might not know that Harris worked with CACI together in at least one aspect of US telecommunications - electronic platforms. Nearly half of all interrogators and analysts employed in January 2004 were CACI employees. (2)

That's the same CACI which is deeply involved with Homeland Security in a majority of defense and civilian agencies, the intelligence community, 44 state governments, more than 200 cities, counties and local agencies in North America, and also contracts with government agencies in Asia-Pacific and Europe. It does not just collect information but "maps terrorist social networks." (3)

Meanwhile SAIC - which was supposedly removed for its incompetence and bias - is back again under the new program, this time sharing the Special Ops Command contract (worth 100 million) to provide media work for 5 years.

But not in Iraq, we are told. And they have nothing to do with planting fake stories, says a spokesman for the Special Ops Command.

The generals would probably believe that.

Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist and author of "The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media," (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com

(1) "Probe Sought Into Stories Planted in Iraqi Media," Mark Mazzetti, LA Time, December 1, 2005.

(2) Including some at Abu Ghraib, though the company has denied this. Two independent investigators are pursuing more than 40 allegations of abuse by interrogators said to be employed by CACI. ("Partnering for Human Rights: Metro Detroit attorney and high school friend give Iraqi detainees a chance to be heard," Patricia Anstett, Detroit Free Press, September 10, 2004).

(3) "CACI and Its Friends," Tim Shorrocks, The Nation, June 4, 2004. See also CACI 2003 Annual Report) "We can monitor the entire globe," says CACI's CEO Jack London. CACI also handles the Federal Aviation Administration's global administrative-data network, runs a data program for the Justice Department and is deeply involved in electronic information distribution, and related services for the entire Department of Justice, Defense, Transportation, DHS, Customs and Border Protection, and the Environmental Protection Agency, computer and interrogation services to the Defense Department, and other agencies.

Iraq Election Spells Total Defeat for US

"The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair, as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral."

By PATRICK COCKBURN
in Baghdad
CounterPunch
December 21, 2005

Iraq is disintegrating. The first results from the parliamentary election last week show that the country is dividing up between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated.

The Shia religious coalition has won a total victory in Baghdad and the south of Iraq. The Sunni Arab parties who openly or covertly support armed resistance to the US are likely to win large majorities in Sunni provinces.

The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq. Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. "In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq," said Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator.

The success of the United Arab Alliance, the coalition of Shia religious parties, has been far greater than expected according to preliminary results from last Thursday's election. It won 58 per cent of the vote in Baghdad, while Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister whom Tony Blair has strongly supported, got only 14 per cent of the vote. In the second city of Iraq, Basra, 77 per cent of voters supported the Alliance and only 11 per cent Mr Allawi.

The election was portrayed by President George W. Bush as a sign of success for US policies in Iraq, but in fact means the triumph of America's enemies inside and outside the country. Iran will be pleased that the Shia religious parties whom it has supported, often for decades, have become the strongest political force.

Ironically Bush is more than ever dependent within Iraq on the goodwill of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for all his maverick reputation. It is the allies of Iran who are growing in influence by the day and have now triumphed in the election. The US will hope that Tehran will be satisfied with this. Iran may be happier with a weakened Iraq in which it is a predominant influence rather than see the country entirely break up.

Another victor in the election is the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose Mehdi Army militia fought fierce battles with US troops last year. The US military said at the time it intended "to kill or capture him." Mr Bush cited the recapture of the holy city of Najaf from the Mehdi Army in August 2004 as an important success for the US army. Al-Sadr will now be one of the most influential leaders within the coalition.

All the parties which did well in the election have strength only within their own community. The Shia coalition succeeded because the Shia make up 60 per cent of Iraqis, but won almost no votes among the Kurds or Sunni each of whom is about 20 per cent of the population. The Sunni and the Kurdish parties won no support outside their own communities.

The highly-regarded US ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, sounded almost despairing yesterday as he reviewed the results of the election. "It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian identities," he said. 'But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian co-operaton."

The election also means a decisive switch from a secular Iraq to a country in which, outside Kurdistan, religious law will be paramount. Mr Allawi, who ran a well-financed campaign with slick television advertising, was the main secular hope but this did not translate into votes. The other main non-religious candidate Ahmed Chalabi received less than one per cent of the vote in Baghdad and will be lucky to win a single seat in the new 275-member Council of Representatives.

"People underestimate how religious Iraq has become," said one Iraqi observer. He added: "Iran is really a secular society with a religious leadership, but Iraq will be a religious society with a religious leadership." Already most girls leaving schools in Baghdad wear headscarves. Women's rights in cases of divorce and inheritance are being eroded.

Sunni Arab leaders were aghast yesterday at the electoral triumph of the Shia, claiming fraud. Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the Sunni Arab alliance, the Iraqi Accordance Front, said that if the electoral commission did not respond to their complaints "we will demand that the elections be held again in Baghdad."

Mr Allawi's Iraqi National List also protested. Ibrahim al-Janabi, a party official, said: "The elections commission is not independent. It is influenced by political parties and by the government."

But while there was probably some fraud and intimidation the results of the election mirror the way in which the Shia majority in Iraq are systematically taking over the levers of power. They already control the Ministry of the Interior with 110,000 police and paramilitary units. Most of the troops in the 80,000 strong army being trained by the US army are Shia.

Mr Khalilzad said yesterday that "you can't have someone who is regarded as sectarian, for example as minister of the interior." This is a not so-veiled criticism of the present minister, Bayan Jabr, a leading member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shia party. He is accused of running death squads and torture centres whose victims are Sunni Arabs.

But it is unlikely that the Shia religious parties and their militias will tolerate any roll back in their power. "They feel their day has come," said Mr Attiyah. For six months they have ruled Iraq in an alliance with the Kurds. The Kurdish leaders are not very happy with the way this government has worked saying that Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister, has broken cooperation agreements.

The Kurds, supported by the US, will now try to dilute Shia control of government by bringing in Sunni ministers and Mr Allawi. But one Kurdish leader said: "We have a strategic alliance with the Shia religious parties we would be unwise to break." The Shia will also be averse to giving powerful posts to politicians like Mr Allawi who have done so poorly at the polls.

The elections are also unlikely to see a diminution in armed resistance to the US by the Sunni community. Insurgent groups have made clear that they see winning seats in parliament as the opening of another front. The US is trying to conciliate the Sunni by the release of 24 top Baathist leaders without charges.But the main demand of the Sunni resistance is a time table for a US withdrawal without which they are unlikely to agree a ceasefire ­ even if they had the unity to negotiate such an agreement.

The new constitution Iraq, overwhelmingly approved in a referendum on October 15 , already creates two super-regions, one Kurdish and the other Shia, which will have quasi-independence. Local law will be superior to national law. They will own newly discovered oil reserves. They will have their own armed forces. They envisage an Iraq which will be a loose confederation rather than a unified state.

The break up of Iraq has been brought closer by last week's election. The great majority of people who went to the polls voted as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The forces pulling Iraq apart are stronger than those holding it together. The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair, as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral.

Jordan, Egypt, Saudis can attend but not join Quartet

PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
21 DECEMBER 2005

Question: what is your position regarding the suggestion that the Republic of Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia be added to the Quartet?

The Secretary-General: Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan have played an important role in the situation in the Middle East. In fact, on the reform of Palestinian security, Egypt has been extremely helpful, working with the Europeans and the Americans to reform the Palestinian security authority. The Quartet, in the past, has broadened its meeting. We had a meeting once where we brought in the three countries Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. And at our last meeting, in September, this issue came up: that we should in the near future allow room for a larger discussion, bringing in the partners in the region. I don’t think there’s an intention to expand the Quartet as such. But the Quartet can meet in an expanded format with the three countries that you mentioned, and I think that is not excluded, that it will take place in the course of this year.

Jewish Group meets to discuss North African Jews

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Dec 22, 2005

A group that is pushing for restitution for Jews who fled Arab countries wants to preserve Jewish sites in the Muslim world.

Several members of the French branch of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, which met this week in Paris, said the group should focus on registering Jewish sites as historical sites with UNESCO. The group, convened under the guidance of CRIF, the umbrella group of secular French Jewish groups, outlined several broad aims: to remember the Jews who came from Arab/Muslim countries; re-establish historical truth concerning ancient Jewish communities existing in Arab countries; and collect testimony regarding the conditions under which Jews lived in Arab countries and which led them to leave these lands.

The group will work with several other French Jewish organizations to promote the culture, history, memory and politics of Jews from these areas.

250 North American Jews immigrate to Israel

Two-hundred fifty North American Jews are to immigrate to Israel. The planeload of immigrants, scheduled to land Dec. 28 at Ben-Gurion International Airport, is the seventh such flight sponsored in 2005 by Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that facilitates immigration for Jews from the United States and Canada.

The chartered flight marks the culmination of a year in which the largest number of Jews from North America has immigrated to Israel since 1984. The Jewish Agency for Israel, which works in partnership with Nefesh B’Nefesh, said that this year, more than 3,000 Jews have chosen to settle in the Jewish state.

Congress gives Israel extra $600 million

Congress passed $600 million for U.S.-Israel cooperative defense programs. The allocation, $150 million more than the White House request, passed the House of Representatives Thursday as part of the Defense Appropriations Bill. The measure passed the Senate Wednesday. The earmark includes $133 million for the Arrow Anti-Ballistic Missile System, $37.4 million for the LITENING Targeting and Navigation Pod, $22 million for Reactive Armor tiles for Bradley fighting vehicles and $17 million for the ITALD aircraft decoy system.

Pictures Of The Year 2005 (4)

Iraq: Baghdad

Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants

By David E. Kaplan
U.S. News and World Report
12/22/05

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.

The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.

FBI officials expressed concern that discussion of the program would expose sensitive methods used in counterterrorism. Although NEST staffers have demonstrated their techniques on national television as recently as October, U.S. News has omitted details of how the monitoring is conducted. Officials from four different agencies declined to respond on the record about the classified program: the FBI, Energy Department, Justice Department, and National Security Council. "We don't ever comment on deployments," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages NEST.

In Washington, the sites monitored have included prominent mosques and office buildings in suburban Maryland and Virginia. One source close to the program said that participants "were tasked on a daily and nightly basis," and that FBI and Energy Department officials held regular meetings to update the monitoring list. "The targets were almost all U.S. citizens," says the source. "A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs. We were told it was perfectly legal."

The question of search warrants is controversial, however. To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways. Government officials familiar with the program insist it is legal; warrants are unneeded for monitoring from public property, they say, as well as from publicly accessible driveways and parking lots. "If a delivery man can access it, so can we," says one.

Georgetown University Professor David Cole, a constitutional law expert, disagrees. Surveillance of public spaces such as mosques or public businesses might well be allowable without a court order, he argues, but not private offices or homes: "They don't need a warrant to drive onto the property -- the issue isn't where they are, but whether they're using a tactic to intrude on privacy. It seems to me that they are, and that they would need a warrant or probable cause."

Cole points to a 2001 Supreme Court decision, U.S. vs. Kyllo, which looked at police use -- without a search warrant -- of thermal imaging technology to search for marijuana-growing lamps in a home. The court, in a ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that authorities did in fact need a warrant -- that the heat sensors violated the Fourth Amendment's clause against unreasonable search and seizure. But officials familiar with the FBI/NEST program say the radiation sensors are different and are only sampling the surrounding air. "This kind of program only detects particles in the air, it's non directional," says one knowledgeable official. "It's not a whole lot different from smelling marijuana."

Officials also reject any notion that the program specifically has targeted Muslims. "We categorically do not target places of worship or entitles solely based on ethnicity or religious affiliation," says one. "Our investigations are intelligence driven and based on a criminal predicate."

Among those said to be briefed on the monitoring program were Vice President Richard Cheney; Michael Brown, then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration; and Richard Clarke, then a top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council. After 9/11, top officials grew increasingly concerned over the prospect of nuclear terrorism. Just weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, a dubious informant named Dragonfire warned that al Qaeda had smuggled a nuclear device into New York City; NEST teams swept the city and found nothing. But as evidence seized from Afghan camps confirmed al Qaeda's interest in nuclear technology, radiation detectors were temporarily installed along Washington, D.C., highways and the Muslim monitoring program began.

Most staff for the monitoring came from NEST, which draws from nearly 1,000 nuclear scientists and technicians based largely at the country's national laboratories. For 30 years, NEST undercover teams have combed suspected sites looking for radioactive material, using high-tech detection gear fitted onto various aircraft, vehicles, and even backpacks and attaché cases. No dirty bombs or nuclear devices have ever been found - and that includes the post-9/11 program. "There were a lot of false positives, and one or two were alarming," says one source. "But in the end we found nothing."

US monitored Muslim sites for radiation: report

Reuters
Fri Dec 23, 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials have secretly monitored radiation levels at Muslim sites, including mosques and private homes, since September 11, 2001 as part of a top secret program searching for nuclear bombs, U.S. News and World Report said on Friday.

The news magazine said in its online edition that the far-reaching program covered more than a hundred sites in the Washington, D.C., area and at least five other cities.

"In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program," the magazine said.

The report comes a week after revelations that the Bush administration had authorized eavesdropping on people in the United States. U.S. President George W. Bush has defended that covert program and vowed to continue the practice, saying it was vital to protect the country.

Senior U.S. officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller, have repeatedly said Islamic militants appeared intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction for an attack against the United States.

Mueller said in February he was "very concerned with the growing body of sensitive reporting that continues to show al Qaeda's clear intention to obtain and ultimately use some form of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-energy explosives material in its attacks against America."

An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny the U.S. News and World Report article and said, "We can't talk about a classified program."

"The FBI's overriding priority is to prevent, disrupt and defeat terrorist operations in the U.S. All investigations and operations conducted by the FBI are intelligence driven and predicated on specific information about potential criminal acts or terrorist threats, and are conducted in strict conformance with federal law," he added.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group said the report, coupled with news of the domestic eavesdropping, "could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights."

"All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims," it said in a statement.

Federal officials cited by U.S. News and World Report maintained the program was legal and said warrants were not needed for the kind of radiation sampling it conducted. Officials also rejected any notion that the program specifically targeted Muslims, the magazine said.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team.

At its peak, the effort involved three vehicles in the Washington area monitoring 120 sites a day, nearly all of them Muslim targets such as prominent mosques and office buildings selected by the FBI, it said.

The program has also operated in at least five other cities -- namely Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle -- when threat levels there have risen, it said.

One source quoted by the magazine said the targets were almost all U.S. citizens.

Vice President Dick Cheney was among those briefed on the monitoring program, the publication said.

Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency

Editorial
The New York Times
December 23, 2005

George W. Bush has quipped several times during his political career that it would be so much easier to govern in a dictatorship. Apparently he never told his vice president that this was a joke.

Virtually from the time he chose himself to be Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000, Dick Cheney has spearheaded an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency - from writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives to abrogating longstanding treaties and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and spy on American citizens.

It was a chance Mr. Cheney seems to have been dreaming about for decades. Most Americans looked at wrenching events like the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iran-contra debacle and worried that the presidency had become too powerful, secretive and dismissive. Mr. Cheney looked at the same events and fretted that the presidency was not powerful enough, and too vulnerable to inspection and calls for accountability.

The president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," Mr. Cheney said this week as he tried to stifle the outcry over a domestic spying program that Mr. Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks.

Before 9/11, Mr. Cheney was trying to undermine the institutional and legal structure of multilateral foreign policy: he championed the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in order to build an antimissile shield that doesn't work but makes military contactors rich. Early in his tenure, Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications. Mr. Cheney offered the usual excuses about the need to get candid advice on important matters, and the courts, sadly, bought it. But the task force was not an exercise in diverse views. Mr. Cheney gathered people who agreed with him, and allowed them to write national policy for an industry in which he had recently amassed a fortune.

The effort to expand presidential power accelerated after 9/11, taking advantage of a national consensus that the president should have additional powers to use judiciously against terrorists.

Mr. Cheney started agitating for an attack on Iraq immediately, pushing the intelligence community to come up with evidence about a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that never existed. His team was central to writing the legal briefs justifying the abuse and torture of prisoners, the idea that the president can designate people to be "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely, and a secret program allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. And when Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons.

There are finally signs that the democratic system is trying to rein in the imperial presidency. Republicans in the Senate and House forced Mr. Bush to back the McCain amendment, and Mr. Cheney's plan to legalize torture by intelligence agents was rebuffed. Congress also agreed to extend the Patriot Act for five weeks rather than doing the administration's bidding and rushing to make it permanent.

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court refused to allow the administration to transfer Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been held by the military for more than three years on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks, from military to civilian custody. After winning the same court's approval in September to hold Mr. Padilla as an unlawful combatant, the administration abruptly reversed course in November and charged him with civil crimes unrelated to his arrest. That decision was an obvious attempt to avoid having the Supreme Court review the legality of the detention powers that Mr. Bush gave himself, and the appeals judges refused to go along.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have insisted that the secret eavesdropping program is legal, but The Washington Post reported yesterday that the court created to supervise this sort of activity is not so sure. It said the presiding judge was arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges and that several judges on the court wanted to know why the administration believed eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants was legal when the law specifically requires such warrants.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are tenacious. They still control both houses of Congress and are determined to pack the judiciary with like-minded ideologues. Still, the recent developments are encouraging, especially since the court ruling on Mr. Padilla was written by a staunch conservative considered by President Bush for the Supreme Court.

Stand With Ayman Nour

The Washington Post
Friday, December 23, 2005; A20

"When you stand for your liberty we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison or exile can know: America sees you for who you are -- the future leaders of your free country."

-- President Bush, in his second inaugural address

PRESIDENT BUSH'S stirring commitment was only nine days old when Egypt's Ayman Nour was arrested in January. Mr. Nour, a 41-year-old member of parliament and a secular democrat, had announced that he intended to challenge President Hosni Mubarak's plan to extend his term in office. The 77-year-old strongman responded by ordering Mr. Nour's prosecution on trumped-up charges. U.S. pressure obtained Mr. Nour's release on bail in March, and he proceeded to stage a quixotic campaign against Mr. Mubarak in September's unfair presidential election.

Now, with the election over and U.S. attention focused on Iraq, Egypt's strongman has returned to persecuting his most prominent liberal opponent. Mr. Nour is back in prison, having been deprived by fraud of his parliamentary seat. Tomorrow, an Egyptian judge notorious for handling the president's dirty work is expected to sentence him to prison. If Mr. Bush's commitment to freedom fighters means anything at all, he cannot allow this blatant act of injustice to go unchallenged.

Some cases of political persecution have gray areas: The defendant might be guilty of supporting violence or hold an extremist ideology. Mr. Nour's is not one of them. He is one of Egypt's foremost proponents of a secular liberal democracy, credited with 8 percent of the vote in the presidential election. The charge against him, forgery, was proved a fabrication five months ago, when one of the principal witnesses recanted in court, saying he had been forced by state security police to invent his testimony. That the trial has continued, with Mr. Nour jailed since Dec. 5, can be explained only by the judge, Abdel Salam Gomaa, a sycophantic follower of Mr. Mubarak who in 2002 sentenced another famous pro-democracy activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to seven years in prison.

In some situations there isn't much the United States can do to help a suffering dissident. That's not the case here, either. Each year, the United States provides Mr. Mubarak's regime with $1.8 billion in military and economic aid; without that money for his generals it's doubtful the aged president could remain in office. Mr. Nour was released on bail in March after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a visit to Egypt. In 2002, a Bush administration threat to withhold several hundred million dollars in aid got Mr. Ibrahim's case in front of the Egyptian Supreme Court, which promptly annulled his conviction. Mr. Mubarak's vindictive persecution of Mr. Nour, whom he perceives as a political rival to his son Gamal, has outraged much of Egypt's political establishment, which would quietly welcome U.S. intervention. Even some members of Mr. Mubarak's cabinet privately describe the prosecution as senseless.

In short, the imprisonment of Mr. Nour will provide Mr. Bush with an opportunity -- and an imperative -- to fight for the cause of democracy in the heart of the Arab Middle East. Mr. Mubarak believes he can suppress his leading democratic challenger and get away with it, because of Egypt's cooperation with Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Bush, and Congress, must prove that wrong, both to the Egyptian government and to the Arabs across the Middle East who will be closely watching Washington's reaction in this case. Standing with Ayman Nour means standing against military aid for Mr. Mubarak until this democratic reformer is free.

Foreigners May Soon Play a Part in Kuwait Oil

By JAD MOUAWAD
The New York Times
December 23, 2005

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait, Dec. 16 - Thirty years after foreign oil companies were expelled from Kuwait, the state is close to opening its lucrative oil production business again to outsiders.

The move, expected to be approved by Parliament next month after nearly a decade of debate and delays, means that one of the top producers in the Persian Gulf finally will lift some of the restrictions imposed on foreign operators. The decision is also eagerly anticipated in oil circles because of hopes that the proposal, which would limit foreign operation to selected fields for a 20-year period, could eventually be extended to other fields in the country and possibly elsewhere in the region.

Recent high oil prices have encouraged governments to further tighten the rules governing foreign participation and prompted a new wave of "resource nationalism." Venezuela, Russia and Bolivia each have pushed for greater control, while Britain plans to increase taxes on its production from the North Sea.

At the same time, producers have come under growing pressure over the last year to increase their investments and bring more oil to the market. But while worldwide demand for oil has been rising rapidly, supplies have so far lagged, especially from OPEC nations.

The reopening to foreigners is so politically charged here that the plan, called Project Kuwait, has been mired in squabbles since it was introduced in 1997. As a result of the opposition to bringing in foreign companies - a movement that brought together a band of Islamic and liberal parties in the Kuwaiti Parliament - production growth has stalled in Kuwait, just as global demand has soared in recent years.

Oil was first discovered in Kuwait in 1938 by the British-Iranian Oil Company, which later became British Petroleum, and by Gulf Oil, now part of Chevron. Most of the country's production has since come from a single field, Burgan, which has accounted for 80 percent of Kuwait's total output.

That oil field, the world's second-largest after Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, is now showing signs of fatigue. Kuwaiti officials would like to take the pressure off by pumping more oil from other fields, including four in the north of the country that Project Kuwait would open to foreign companies.

"Our part of the world needs to increase its capacity to meet the projected growth in demand over the coming years," said Nader Sultan, the former chief executive of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and a strong backer of the plan. "There is pressure on us to increase our capacity. The question then becomes, Can we do it alone?"

Years of underinvestment in Kuwait have led to slowing output since the 1970's. Kuwait oil officials argue that they need the help of global oil companies to manage the more challenging extraction methods required at the newer oil reservoirs, now that the country's easy oil has been removed.

Last year, Kuwait pumped about 3 percent of the oil produced worldwide, or about 2.5 million barrels a day. The country hopes to raise daily production to four million barrels by 2020. By then, Project Kuwait is expected to account for a third of the country's production.

But at these volumes, Kuwait will also be pumping out 10 million barrels a day of water associated with the oil production process. Officials say the country's state-owned oil company cannot do this without foreign expertise.

There are other nontechnical reasons for the invitation. With oil selling around $60 a barrel, any delay in increasing production means Kuwait will be missing out on the greatest oil boom in three decades and millions of dollars in profits every week. Some also believe that welcoming international oil companies, including some from the United States, would provide additional security for Kuwait, which was invaded by Iraq in 1990 and served as a major staging ground to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Kuwait's constitution bars foreign companies from owning or operating the country's oil resources. So Parliament, which has been fighting the government to gain a larger oversight role in running the country, must conduct a formal vote to allow the government to invite foreign operators back. Foreign companies are currently allowed in Kuwait only as service providers on behalf of Kuwait's oil company, not as operators.

"The step the government wants to take is against the law, and we have to stand against it strongly," said Naser al-Sane, a member of Kuwait's Parliament since 1992, who is part of the Islamic Constitutional Movement. "The constitutional issue is the main one. We're not against foreign investments, but the problem is that you have to stick to the constitution."

Abdulla al-Nibari, a former member of Parliament who helped nationalize the oil industry in 1975 and who opposes Project Kuwait, says he does not believe the country needs to increase its production. Kuwait, he said, can keep using foreign service companies to provide technical assistance without having to bring back any of the major oil companies, which controlled the country's energy for decades.

"I don't buy the argument that the market needs more," Mr. Nibari said. "We produce oil to get money to cover our expense. That's our responsibility. Two million barrels is enough. Our experience is that surplus money is squandered, sometimes embezzled. Oil in the ground is a much better form of savings."

To break the long-standing deadlock, the government has agreed to Parliament's main demands. For example, the oil produced will remain the property of Kuwait; ownership will not be transferred. Also, the contracts will be considered service agreements, not foreign concessions. All of this means that the oil companies will not be allowed to book the reserves from the fields they operate.

While many now expect the government to win approval from Parliament, the ownership issue might prove to be a serious stumbling block for oil companies, which usually want to show oil reserves as assets on their books.

After all, this is the ultimate prize in the Persian Gulf for the oil companies. Five countries - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - hold 60 percent of the world's oil reserves, more than 700 billion barrels. But either because of government policies or because of economic sanctions and war, access by foreign companies to these vast reserves has been limited since the 1970's.

To be sure, the Persian Gulf is not completely free of international involvement. The United Arab Emirates brought in Exxon Mobil last year to expand a major production field that was already partly owned by a Japanese company. Qatar recently embarked on a multibillion-dollar program to build natural-gas exporting plants with Exxon Mobil and other foreign oil companies.

But Project Kuwait, experts said, is a big step for the oil world. Kuwait is the fourth-largest holder of oil, with 99 billion barrels of proven reserves, or 8 percent of the world's total, according to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy. The fields covered by Project Kuwait hold about 10 percent of these reserves.

Three groups of international oil companies, led by BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, have long been interested in the $8.5 billion project. If Parliament approves the project when it meets on Jan. 23, the government will award the bid on the basis of a single criterion, the minimum fee that each group is willing to take for each barrel they produce.

Throughout the history of oil, there has been a constant struggle between nations that hold the oil fields and consider them their property, and international oil companies, whose dominant role has been slowly eroded in the last century by the rise of nationalism.

But relations between nations and international companies are still evolving. Algeria, for example, nationalized its oil sector in 1971, a decade after gaining its independence from France. In 1991, it allowed foreign oil companies back.

"I see no contradiction in that," said Nordine Ait-Laoussine, who helped engineer both moves, first as head of Sonatrach, the country's state oil company and, two decades later, as Algeria's oil minister.

"What we did in Algeria was always in the interest of the nation," Mr. Ait-Laoussine said. "And in 20 years, the national interest changed."

For Ahmad al-Arbeed, the member of the board of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation who is in charge of Project Kuwait, there is also a "philosophical aspect to the debate."

"I am a follower of the school that says we should be a good citizen and we should make available the oil that the world needs," he said. "That's the whole objective of having an oil sector in Kuwait."

He added, "Also, if we waited another 20 years, there might be alternatives to oil. It's better for us to produce as quickly as possible and increase our revenue."

Such talk is unlikely to reassure those who argue that involving foreign companies, who have an incentive to maximize production and financial returns, risks squandering the nation's resources.

Mr. Nibari, the veteran politician, recalled that in 1972 British Petroleum and Gulf had planned to raise Kuwait's production to five million barrels a day, accelerating the depletion rate of the Burgan field and increasing the amount of water that is generally pumped out with the oil. The project was eventually shelved when the industry was nationalized.

"The question now will be a question of political stamina and dynamism and whether the government doesn't get sidetracked by other issues," said Mr. Sultan, the former oil executive. "You really have to be focused on this."

The country's oil minister, a member of the ruling al-Sabah family, appeared ready to push for the votes next month.

"It is my understanding that there are always oppositions and supporters - this is democracy," Sheik Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah, Kuwait's oil minister, said in a news conference in Kuwait City. "For me, as a minister, I think I have to make it a priority on the energy side. But, God willing, I am crossing my fingers."

Goss Tells Turks to Prepare for Iran Attack

Kurt Nimo
December 20th 2005

You’d think the fact Porter Goss, head broom sweeper at the CIA, recently told the Turkish government the United States plans to attack Iran and Syria would be headline splashing news in the New York Times and the Washington Post. But although the news was carried in the Turkish press, it elicited hardly a murmur here in America, with the exception of United Press International and Reuters. As for the latter, only Goss’ meeting with Turkish officials on the “separatist terrorist organization” known as the Kurdistan Workers Party was mentioned and nothing about the impending attack, while the UPI mentioned it in the fourth paragraph, stating: “Goss said that Iran sees Turkey as an enemy and will ‘export its regime,’ warning Ankara to be ready for a possible U.S. aerial operation against Iran and Syria.”

PHX News was more specific and noted the lack of attention the story: “In an overlooked story, the Turkish press reported last week that CIA Director Porter Goss went to Ankara recently and informed the Turkish government that Iran already has nuclear weapons and they should be ready for ‘a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria.’” The Turkish Press added more details:

During his recent visit to Ankara, CIA Director Porter Goss reportedly brought three dossiers on Iran to Ankara. Goss is said to have asked for Turkey’s support for Washington’s policy against Iran’s nuclear activities, charging that Tehran had supported terrorism and taken part in activities against Turkey. Goss also asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria. Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region. Diplomatic sources say that Washington wants Turkey to coordinate with its Iran policies. The second dossier is about Iran’s stance on terrorism. The CIA argued that Iran was supporting terrorism, the PKK and al-Qaeda.

In short, Goss and Mueller were sent by the neocons to shop around an “air operation against Iran and Syria” in Turkey in exchange for a hardline against the Kurds and using the unestablished “fact” the Iranians have nukes and the desire to use them as enticement.

As I have written here for months, the neocons are determined to attack Iran and Syria, if only with airstrikes. Of course, if this is accomplished it will stir up even more chaos and strife, precisely what the neocons want, regardless of all the nonsense Bush mumbles about democracy and Iraqi elections. As we should know if we pay attention, the Bushcons are playing by the Zionist script in an effort to balkanize the Muslim Middle East by way of mass murder and sectarian violence.

House passes Saudi education resolution

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution urging educational reform in Saudi Arabia.

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Jim Davis (D-Fla.), notes that “some textbooks in Saudi Arabian schools foster intolerance, ignorance, and anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Western views” and urges the Bush administration to make Saudi education reform an element of bilateral relations.

Several American jewish organizations recently claimed that Saudi Arabia is also funding teaching materials for American public schools that contain anti-Israel and anti-Western views.

The resolution passed on Monday by a vote of 351-1. The sole dissenter was Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas.) It now goes to the Senate.

Rice: Talk of Israeli strike on Iran ‘unhelpful’

Speculation about a possible Israeli attack on Iran is “not helpful,” the U.S. secretary of state said.

“I think the speculation is not really very helpful,” Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press last Friday. “Israel is, of course, a sovereign state and we’re not in the habit of telling the Israelis how to defend themselves. However, we’ve said to everybody that this region is very volatile and it’s best — and I think the Israelis have said this, too; Prime Minister Sharon has said this — it is best to resolve this issue through diplomatic means, and that’s where we’re all focused.”

The international community is pressing Iran to roll back its nuclear program. Israel fears Iran’s road to a nuclear weapon could be irreversible as early as March.

Pictures Of The Year 2005 (3)

Palestine: Tulkurum - West Bank

Hamas on the Ballot

Editorial
The New York Times
December 22, 2005

The messy thing about democracy is that people tend to vote for the candidates they want - a point that seemed lost on Israel yesterday when it threatened to ban East Jerusalem Arabs from voting in the scheduled Palestinian elections if Hamas took part.

Israel is concerned about a strong showing by Hamas. That's understandable, but democracy doesn't work this way. Israel allowed Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in Palestinian Authority elections in 1996 and earlier this year, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president. Israel can't just decide to take away that right because it's afraid of who may win next time.

The choice here is between two evils, and the greater would be to take extraordinary measures to keep Hamas out of the running. The more that Israel and the United States are perceived as meddling in the vote, the more Palestinians will seek to defy them. If Hamas is forced off the ticket, or the elections are canceled, Hamas will come out with an even higher standing among the Palestinians.

To be sure, the other option, letting Hamas run, is hard to stomach. But it is the lesser evil because any movement, once in power, is compelled to supplement its bluster with deeds. That's what happened to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which once seemed even less acceptable than Hamas. In fact, many of the Palestinians who voted for Hamas in the municipal elections did so not because they approve of Islamist terrorism, but because the P.L.O., which was supposed to be their sole legitimate representative, has proved corrupt and incapable of giving them peace or happiness.

We can only hope that if Hamas wins a share of power, Palestinians will expect the same of it as they did of the P.L.O. If the Islamic militants persist in provoking Israeli incursions, roadblocks and assassinations, their welcome will soon wear thin.

The Bush administration must continue to urge Israel to abandon its threat to prevent Palestinians in East Jerusalem from voting. The real intent of such a move would be to force Mr. Abbas to cancel the election. If the administration and Israel really believe that a democratic Middle East is the only road to peace, then they must give it a try.

Senators push to exclude Hamas from elections

Wed Dec 21, 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seventy U.S. senators on Wednesday called on President George W. Bush to make it clear to Palestinian leaders that Hamas and other groups that the United States wants terrorist organizations to disarm or be banned from upcoming Palestinian elections.

The senators in a letter to Bush said the United States "would have little choice but to reevaluate all aspects of our relations" with the Palestinian Authority if Hamas "or such groups" were brought into it.

The Senate letter follows a resolution passed overwhelmingly last week by the House of Representatives that also urged the exclusion of Hamas from the January 25 parliamentary ballot.

The House resolution said Hamas' participation could undermine the ability of the United States to provide assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

Senators said they were "deeply disappointed" that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "has yet to do what the Palestinian Authority has committed to doing on numerous occasions -- asserting its control over the terrorist groups that operate freely within the West Bank and Gaza."

The senators said Bush should "press the Palestinian leaders to use the leverage they now have with these terrorist groups to insist that they adhere to a basic set of principles before they can run for political office."

Hamas has grown in popularity among Palestinians for a corruption-free reputation, its extensive charity network and its role in suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel.

Rumsfeld Tells Troops U.S. Faces Attack If It Pulls Out

By Associated Press
December 22, 2005

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — In a holiday season pep talk to U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an early withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq would lead to new terrorist attacks on Americans at home.

Rumsfeld thanked several hundred soldiers for their service, speaking in a heated tent at this base, which serves as the main airfield for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"If we were to withdraw from Afghanistan precipitously, or from Iraq, the terrorists would attack us first somewhere else and then they would attack us at home, let there be no doubt," he said.

Earlier in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, Rumsfeld said reducing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would not weaken the campaign against Taliban fighters and Al Qaeda terrorists.

He spoke at a news conference outside the heavily guarded presidential palace after meeting with President Hamid Karzai.

He had announced a day earlier that the size of the U.S. force in Afghanistan would shrink from about 19,000 to about 16,500 by next spring.

Karzai, noting that Vice President Dick Cheney had visited Kabul on Monday, told reporters that the U.S. had assured the Afghans that a reduction in U.S. forces would not undermine joint efforts to improve internal security.

"The United States has assured us of continued support and assistance on all matters," including security, Karzai said.

Turkey Warns US About Iran Nukes

By Metehan Demir
Jerusalem Post
December 22, 2005

ANKARA--Iran is irreversibly bent on having nuclear weapons and the US must engage in direct talks with Teheran on the matter, Turkish Ambassador to the United States told a Washington think tank Wednesday.

"Iran's nuclear weapons would be a serious threat to security in the Middle East. The European Union's effort is unlikely to succeed. Direct US-Iran talks are needed," Ambassador Faruk Logoglu said.

Logoglu, who served in the past as an undersecretary in the Turkish foreign ministry, suggested that the United States come up with a carrot-and-stick tactic for convincing Iran to stop its attempts to develop nuclear weapons. He suggested that the "carrot" should come from the US, but added that "I don't think is likely n 2006."

Logoglu's on-the-record remarks to the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies marked the first time a Turkish ambassador has spoken out on Iran's suspicious nuclear activities in such a clear and accusing way.

Warning Washington that tensions between the US and Iran will affect Turkey's relations with the US, Logoglu stressed that the Iranian situation will inevitably affect Turkey.

The ambassador's remarks follow an Ankara court's decision last Friday that terrorism is the instrument of Iranian foreign policy and that Teheran will not hesitate to use terrorism against its rival to achieve its goals. Last month, Turkey's key National Security Policy Document singled out Iran as a potential source of instability and uncertainty in the region due to its suspicious nuclear programs.

Turkish sources said that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to visit Ankara in mid-January, and similar Turkish worries over Iranian nuclear activities would be raised during the talks.

Explosives Heist One of the Biggest in Recent History

Officials Say The Material Taken From the New Mexico Area Can Level a Building
ABC News
Dec. 20, 2005

According to federal officials, the theft of 400 pounds of high-powered plastic explosives in New Mexico is one of the largest high explosives heists in recent history.

The material was taken from Cherry Engineering, a company owned by Chris Cherry, a scientist at Sandia National Labs. The site, located outside Albuquerque, had no guards and no surveillance cameras. It was the site's second theft in the past two years.

Thieves apparently used blowtorches to cut through the storage trailers -- suggesting they knew what they were after.

Officials say that the amount of stolen explosives would be enough to match the bomb that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and they do not know who might be responsible.

"We don't have any suspect," said Wayne Dixie of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "We don't have any leads at this point."

The stolen goods include 150 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and 250 pounds of thin sheets of explosives that could be used in letter bombs. Also, 2,500 detonators were missing from a storage explosive container, or magazine, in a bunker owned by Cherry Engineering.

"Believe me, this can cause a catastrophic explosion of unbelievable proportions in the right configuration," said Jack Cloonan, an ABC News consultant and former FBI agent. "So it's very dangerous. We have to find this stuff and find it now."

In anticipation of potential danger, officials sent an alert to federal buildings and courthouses in New Mexico.

"This is not stuff that you peddle around at the flea market, Cloonan said. "This is stuff that has specific use."

Revolt of the Professionals

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; A31

The national security structure that the Bush administration created after Sept. 11, 2001, began to crumble this month because of a bipartisan revolt on Capitol Hill. Newly emboldened legislators forced the administration to accept new rules for the interrogation of prisoners, delayed renewal of the Patriot Act and demanded an investigation of warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency.

President Bush has bristled at these challenges to his authority over what has amounted to an undeclared national state of emergency. But the intelligence professionals who have daily responsibility for waging the war against terrorism don't seem particularly surprised or unhappy to see the emergency structure in trouble. They want clear rules and public support that will allow them to do their jobs effectively over the long haul, without getting second-guessed or jerked around by politicians. Basically, they don't want to be left holding the bag -- which this nation has too often done with its professional military and intelligence officers.

I met this week with a senior intelligence official who has spent much of his career pursuing terrorist targets. I asked him what he thought, watching the emergency structure come down around him. "We all knew it would," he said. The interim structure was inherently unsustainable. But he noted that the very fact that the nation is debating rules for interrogation and surveillance of suspected terrorists demonstrates the success the intelligence agencies have had since Sept. 11 in disrupting attacks.

The civil liberties debate is indeed a welcome sign that we are returning to normality. We wouldn't be anguishing over these issues if terrorists were continuing to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. As we learned after Sept. 11, a frightened nation loses its sense of balance. Now that the nation feels more secure, we insist anew on the rule of law. Presidents may claim extraordinary powers in times of crisis (and Bush is hardly the first), but the checks and balances inherent in our system push us back toward the center line drawn by the Founders.

One little-noted factor in this re-balancing is what I would call "the officers' revolt" -- and by that I mean both military generals in uniform and intelligence officers at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies. There has been growing uneasiness among these national security professionals at some of what they have been asked to do, and at the seeming unconcern among civilian leaders at the Pentagon and the CIA for the consequences of administration decisions.

The quiet revolt of the generals at the Pentagon is a big reason U.S. policy in Iraq has been changing, far more than Bush's stay-the-course speeches might suggest. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is deeply unpopular with senior military officers. They complain privately about a management style that has stretched the military to the breaking point in Iraq. For months they have been working out details of troop reductions next year in Iraq -- not just because such action will keep the Army and Marine Corps from cracking but because they think a smaller footprint will be more effective in stabilizing the country.

A similar revolt is evident at the CIA. Professional intelligence officers are furious at the politicized leadership brought to the agency by ex-congressman Porter Goss and his retinue of former congressional staffers. Their mismanagement has peeled away a generation of senior management in the CIA's Directorate of Operations who have resigned, transferred or signaled their intention to quit when their current tours are up. Many of those who remain are trying to keep their heads down until the current wave of political jockeying and reorganization is over -- which is the last thing you would want at an effective intelligence agency.

The CIA, like the military, wants clear and sustainable rules of engagement. Agency employees don't want their careers ruined by future congressional or legal investigations of actions they thought were authorized. Unhappiness within the CIA about fuzzy rules on interrogation, and the risk of getting clobbered after the fact for doing your job, was a secret driver for Sen. John McCain's push for a new law banning cruel interrogation techniques.

President Bush needs to do what he so often talks about, which is to provide strong leadership. In place of the post-Sept. 11 emergency structure, the country needs clear rules that Congress can debate and finally endorse. It may be, for example, that the NSA does need more agile and more flexible techniques for wiretapping suspected terrorists, like those the president secretly imposed in 2001. If so, it's time to amend our laws. Framing clear rules that meet traditional American legal standards is a sign of the nation's recovery from Sept. 11 -- and it's a process that will serve, above all, the professionals fighting terrorism on the front lines.

8 Ex-Detainees Not Allowed Into Country

By Paul Martin
Washington Times
December 21, 2005

AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordan has prevented the United States from bringing eight former Iraqi detainees onto its soil, in a move that has strained the normally solid relationship between the United States and its Arab ally.

Jordan's refusal was applauded by Iraq's national security adviser, Mouaffaq Rubaie, whose government objected to the releases. "I certainly hope Jordan turns them down," he said.

Jordanian sources said negotiations are under way to find other Arab countries willing to take in the former Saddam Hussein regime members, who were among 24 persons reportedly freed from U.S.-run detention facilities over the weekend.

None of them ever was charged with any crime, but all were investigated for links to illegal regime activities. They include two scientists accused of working on Saddam's biological-weapons programs.

Negotiators are working on a proposal that 24 freed "high-value detainees" will be distributed among Syria, Egypt and two of the Persian Gulf states, with Jordan also accepting a small number. So far, it is thought that one of the lesser-known former detainees has been allowed in.

If new homes cannot be found for the released detainees, at least some of them face being arrested again by the Iraqi government.

Jordan's official spokesman, Nasser Jawdeh, said his country had "not been consulted" about taking in the prisoners. He declined to comment further.

Some, like microbiologist Huda Ammash, said they wished to return to their homes in Iraq.

"She says she has no enemies," said her sister, Ittihad Ammash.

But prisoners' rights lawyer Badie Izzat told The Washington Times from Baghdad that the majority of released high-value detainees were electing to leave the country. The United States had told the detainees it would not protect any detainees who now choose to remain inside Iraq, Mr. Izzat said.

Iraq's government has expressed exasperation at the release of the prisoners. Mr. Rubaie said two judges from the same court that is trying Saddam and seven co-defendants for murder are "very angry" because they had long ago issued arrest warrants for several of the freed prisoners.

He said he could confirm that both biochemical scientists -- Huda Ammash, known as "Mrs. Anthrax", and Rihab Taha, dubbed "Dr. Germ" -- would be detained by Iraqi forces if they left U.S. custody. He declined to say what charges they faced.

The national security adviser said the incident had showed "we need to work hard to improve the highly inadequate level of coordination between U.S. forces and ourselves."

Mr. Rubaie said he was worried that the United States now would release "a whole lot more" -- not only of the estimated 46 remaining high-value detainees, but also from the 14,000 lower-level detainees in U.S. hands.

Asked where the eight high-value detainees were now, he said: "I can only say: 'No comment.'"

Iraq Election Results Will Pose New Challenges For U.S. Policy

Votes along sectarian and ethnic lines mean Washington must do more to quell tensions and may have to forge ties with Shiite-led Iran.
By Tyler Marshall and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers
Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2005

WASHINGTON — The apparent failure of secular, Western-oriented political groups to win many seats in Iraq's four-year legislature puts new pressure on the Bush administration in its efforts to stabilize the country.

In Iraq, U.S. officials will have to intensify their efforts to contain ethnic and sectarian divisions that have deepened over the last year and, if allowed to fester, could push the country toward civil war. And as initial results indicate that the Iraqi government will be led by Shiite Muslims with ties to Iran, U.S. officials also may face pressure to establish their own direct working relationship with Tehran. Both tasks could prove crucial if the administration is to achieve its oft-stated goal of creating a stable, unified, democratic and peaceful country.

On Tuesday, as election officials in Baghdad released data suggesting that Shiite-led parties had won big, there were signs the Bush administration was already working to damp enmity over the results.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters at a news conference in the capital that he had conducted "preliminary discussions" with Iraqi leaders, urging them to reach across the sectarian and ethnic lines dividing Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Allawi Bloc Fares Poorly

The Bush administration had vocally supported electoral alliances that crossed such lines, including the one led by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite. But all such groups did poorly.

Allawi's Iraqi National List appears to have won only 21 seats, claiming 8% of the popular vote tallied so far, whereas the religious Shiite-based United Iraqi Alliance has apparently garnered 110 seats with an estimated 44% of the vote. Allawi and other groups are expected to pick up more seats in the 275-member parliament once expatriate votes are tallied.

A secular alliance headed by controversial Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a onetime Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, scored less than 0.5% of the vote — not enough to win a seat.

"It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic and sectarian identities," Khalilzad said. "But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic cooperation."

The strong draw of Iraq's religious and ethnic-based parties, coupled with the poor showing of broader alliances, underscores a potential danger in the Bush administration's stated plan to expand democracy across the Middle East: Elections can act to sharpen social divisions rather than heal them and to increase political instability rather than temper it.

Those with experience in elections in conflict zones said they were not surprised by the initial results in Iraq.

"Voters are not looking for creative, forward-looking candidates, they are looking for people who they think can protect them," said James Dobbins, a foreign affairs specialist at the Rand Corp.'s Washington officewho has served in diplomatic posts, including in the Balkans, under several presidents. "They fall back on the familiar and the powerful. The same thing happened in postwar Bosnia, where the parties that fed the conflict in the first place got most of the vote."

Dobbins noted that the last U.S. forces pulled out of Bosnia-Herzegovina nine years after they were deployed in 1995, and a European security force still remained in the country.

"We're going to have to face the fact that there are strong centrifugal forces in Iraq that have the potential of tearing the country apart," he added.

The tension among Iraq's various groups was underscored Tuesday as rival parties traded accusations of vote fraud. The main Sunni Muslim Arab coalition, the National Accordance Front, alleged "flagrant forgery" in the Baghdad electoral district.

"Falsifying the will of the voters in such flagrant way will have serious reflections upon security and political stabilization, and will put the future of the political process in the wind," the group said in a statement.

"We reject these results," Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni bloc, said before calling for a rerun of the Baghdad elections.

Allawi's supporters, meanwhile, accused religious Shiites of ballot-rigging and intimidation. Ibrahim Janabi, an Allawi deputy, said armed and masked men roamed the capital's Sadr City district on election day and threatened to kill anyone who voted for Allawi's bloc.

In public Tuesday, senior U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington insisted that the results of the election were too preliminary to determine the precise shape of the new government.

Sunni Parties Lagging

But as vote-counting continued in Baghdad, it seemed increasingly clear that Shiite religious parties and groups representing ethnic Kurds' interests would dominate the parliament, and Sunni-based parties appeared likely to win about 20% of the seats, below their expectations.

The United Iraqi Alliance, an amalgam of Shiite political parties that won the most seats in the interim parliament that was elected in January, appears to have won, with its reported 110 seats, nearly half of the 230 seats being allocated by province in the new assembly. Of the seats whose outcomes were being estimated, the Kurds followed with 43, and a Sunni Arab coalition with about 35. An additional 45 seats will be allocated nationally according to a complicated formula.

White House national security advisor Stephen Hadley emphasized the importance of bringing Sunnis into the government in a speech to a group of foreign affairs experts in Washington on Tuesday. He agreed that the administration must get "key neighboring and Arab states more involved in Iraq," but was less certain how the U.S. planned to deal with Iran.

No Embassy Contact Yet

In Senate testimony two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration was considering direct contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to gain greater cooperation on Iraq. She indicated that such contact would be restricted to issues related to Iraq and would probably occur through the Baghdad embassies of the two countries.

On Tuesday, however, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that so far, there had been no communication between the U.S. and Iranian embassies. The United States severed diplomatic ties with Iran after Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the two nations have had no regular contact since.

On Iraq, however, Iran and the United States have an overlapping interest in ensuring that the incoming Shiite-led government in Baghdad survives. Iran wields considerable influence among Shiite political parties in Iraq, and there are strong social and economic links between Shiite-dominated southern Iraq and Shiite-led Iran.

"We have to establish our own lines to Iran," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank.

"No matter what outrageous shenanigans are happening in Iran, what counts is that the Iranians are there in Iraq, using hard power, soft power and money, and they aren't going away."

Any resumption of direct contacts would be controversial, particularly given that the Bush administration believes Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and that Iran's recently elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called for the annihilation or relocation of Israel.

Pictures Of The Year 2005 (2)

The Associated Press
July 11, 2005

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Women wept Monday as they finally buried husbands and sons 10 years after Europe’s worst massacre since World War II — funerals made possible by the excavation of mass graves of victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces in an abandoned car battery factory that was the wartime base for Dutch U.N. soldiers.

The Dutch were supposed to protect Srebrenica — a designated U.N. safe zone— from Serb attacks during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. But outmanned and outgunned, the Dutch mission watched as Srebrenica’s men and boys were separated from the women and led away, to be slain and dumped into shallow graves that are still being discovered a decade later.

To the sound of Muslim prayers echoing across a sprawling green valley, family members wandered among 610 caskets of the most recently identified victims of the July 11, 1995, massacre, in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed.

On a fence, families of the victims hung a huge banner with their own count of the dead. It read: “Europe’s shame — genocide. 8,106 murdered in Srebrenica.”

The Fog of False Choices

Editorial
The New York Times
December 20, 2005

After five years, we're used to President Bush throwing up false choices to defend his policies. Americans were told, after all, that there was a choice between invading Iraq and risking a terrorist nuclear attack. So it was not a surprise that Mr. Bush's Oval Office speech Sunday night and his news conference yesterday were thick with Orwellian constructions: the policy debate on Iraq is between those who support Mr. Bush and those who want to pull out right now, today; fighting terrorists in Iraq means we're not fighting them here.

But none of these phony choices were as absurd as the one Mr. Bush posed to justify his secret program of spying on Americans: save lives or follow the law.

Mr. Bush said he thwarted terrorist plots by allowing the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international communications without a warrant. We don't know if that is true because the administration reverts to top-secret mode when pressed for details. But we can reach a conclusion about Mr. Bush's assertion that obeying a 27-year-old law prevents swift and decisive action in a high-tech era. It's a myth.

The 1978 law that regulates spying on Americans (remember Richard Nixon's enemies lists?) does require a warrant to conduct that sort of surveillance. It also created a special court that is capable of responding within hours to warrant requests. If that is not fast enough, the attorney general may authorize wiretaps and then seek a warrant within 72 hours.

Mr. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales offered a whole bag of logical pretzels yesterday to justify flouting this law. Most bizarre was the assertion that Congress authorized the surveillance of American citizens when it approved the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" by the United States military to punish those responsible for the 9/11 attacks or who aided or harbored the terrorists. This came as a surprise to lawmakers, who thought they were voting for the invasion of Afghanistan and the capture of Osama bin Laden.

This administration has a long record of expanding presidential powers in dangerous ways; the indefinite detention of "unlawful enemy combatants" comes to mind. So assurances that surveillance targets are carefully selected with reasonable cause don't comfort. In a democracy ruled by laws, investigators identify suspects and prosecutors obtain warrants for searches by showing reasonable cause to a judge, who decides if legal tests were met.

Chillingly, this is not the only time we've heard of this administration using terrorism as an excuse to spy on Americans. NBC News recently discovered a Pentagon database of 1,500 "suspicious incidents" that included a Quaker meeting to plan an antiwar rally. And Eric Lichtblau writes in today's Times that F.B.I. counterterrorism squads have conducted numerous surveillance operations since Sept. 11, 2001, on groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group.

Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the power to spy on Americans. Fine, then Congress can just take it back.

Bush's Approval Rating

House Resolution 284 Passes: Stealth Attack On Egypt Succeeded

12/19/2005 Passed/agreed to in House. Status: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution, as amended Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required): 388 - 22 (Roll no. 667).

As Passed Text Follows:

SUSPEND THE RULES AND AGREE TO THE CONCURRENTRESOLUTION, H. CON. RES. 284, WITH AMENDMENTS
(THE AMENDMENTS CONSIST OF A NEW PREAMBLE AND ACOMPLETE NEW TEXT)

109TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. CON. RES. 284

Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections in Egypt.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

OCTOBER 27, 2005

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself and Mr. ACKERMAN) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections in Egypt.

Whereas promoting freedom and democracy is a foreign policy and national security priority of the United States;

Whereas free, fair, and transparent elections constitute a foundation of any meaningful democracy;

Whereas Egypt is the largest Arab nation comprising over half the Arab world’s population;

Whereas Congress has long supported Egypt as a partner for peace and stands ready to support Egypt’s emergence as a democracy and free market economy;

Whereas a successful democracy in Egypt would definitely dispel the notion that democracy cannot succeed in the Arab Muslim world;

Whereas in his 2005 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush stated that ‘‘the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East’’;

Whereas in her June 20, 2005, remarks at the American University in Cairo, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated: ‘‘[T]he Egyptian Government must fulfill the promise it has made to its people—and to the entire world—by giving its citizens the freedom to choose. Egypt’s elections, including the Parliamentary elections, must meet objective standards that define every free election.’;

Whereas on February 26, 2005, Egyptian President Mubarak proposed to amend the Egyptian Constitution to allow for Egypt’s first ever multi-candidate presidential election;

Whereas in May 2005, President Bush stated that Egypt’s presidential election should proceed with international monitors and with rules that allow for a real campaign;

Whereas Egypt prohibited international monitoring in the presidential election, calling such action an infringement on its national sovereignty;

Whereas domestic monitoring of the election became a major point of contention between the government, the judiciary, and civil society organizations;

Whereas in May 2005, the Judges Club, an unofficial union for judges, took the provisional decision to boycott the election if their demand for a truly independent judiciary was not met;

Whereas the Judges Club initially insisted that the 9,000 to 10,000 judges were in no position to monitor the election if plans proceeded for polling at 54,000 stations on one day;

Whereas the government responded to their demands by grouping polling stations to decrease their number to about 10,000, more or less matching the number of available judges;

Whereas on September 2, 2005, a majority of the general assembly of the Judges Club decided that the judges would supervise the election and report any irregularities;

Whereas several coalitions of Egyptian civil society organizations demanded access to polling stations on election day and successfully secured court rulings granting them such access;

Whereas the Presidential Election Council, citing its constitutional authority to oversee the election process, reportedly ignored the court order for several days, before they granted some nongovernmental organizations access to polling stations a few hours before the polls opened;

Whereas the presidential campaign ran from August 17 to September 4, 2005;

Whereas the presidential election held on September 7, 2005, was largely peaceful, but reportedly marred by low turnout, general confusion over election procedures, alleged manipulation by government authorities, and other inconsistencies;

Whereas the presidential election was a potentially important step toward democratic reform in Egypt and a test of President Mubarak’s pledge to open the country’s authoritarian political system;

Whereas Mr. Mubarak promised to allow during the presidential campaign a free press and independent judiciary, lift emergency laws that stifle political activity, reduce presidential powers in favor of a more freely elected parliament, and allow a slow but steady transition to a liberal democracy;

Whereas parliamentary elections were held in Egypt in November and December 2005;

Whereas several local human rights and civil society organizations issued a joint statement declaring unease over the Egyptian Government’s criticism of independent judges, stating that the government was trying to deprive the organizations of the right of free expression;

Whereas reports prepared by judges who monitored the parliamentary elections indicated that numerous violations occurred in the second and third rounds of voting, including the physical prevention of voters from casting their votes, the closure of roads and streets leading to polling stations, and assaults on several judges as they oversaw the elections and protested the security agencies measures to prevent voters from reaching polling stations;

Whereas other Egyptian nongovernmental election monitors also have complained that security forces blocked thousands of eligible voters from entering polling stations during the parliamentary elections;

Whereas poll monitors and human rights organizations reported that violence initiated by Egyptian security forces, coupled with wide-scale arrests, contributed to poor turnout across the country during the parliamentary elections;

Whereas violence during the parliamentary elections, including reports of excessive force by Egyptian security services, resulted in the deaths of several demonstrators and the wounding of dozens more;

Whereas Ayman Nour, Mr. Mubarak’s only serious challenger in the presidential election, was declared in the parliamentary elections to have lost his seat—in a Cairo district that elected him twice before—to a former state security official with reported ties to President Mubarak;

Whereas it was reported that Mr. Nour, a secular liberal, was harassed repeatedly by Mr. Mubarak’s proxies and slandered by the Egyptian media, and local election observers reported numerous irregularities in Mr. Nour’s Cairo district;

Whereas the Egyptian Government’s apparent manipulation of the electoral system resulted in a weakening of the secular opposition and a strengthening of the Islamist opposition in Egypt; and

Whereas it is in the national interests of the United States and Egypt that Egypt be governed by a truly representative, pluralist, and legitimate national parliament: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress—

(1) recognizes the presidential election held on September 7, 2005, as a potential first step toward greater political reforms in Egypt;

(2) expresses grave concern over the widely reported irregularities during the Egyptian presidential election and parliamentary elections held in November and December 2005, including interference by Egyptian security forces, and the apparent failure of the Government of Egypt to ensure that the elections were free, fair, and transparent;

(3) calls on the Government of Egypt to take immediate steps to address these reported violations of the fundamental freedoms of the Egyptian people and hold those responsible for such violations accountable;

(4) recognizes that the development of a democratically-elected representative and empowered Egyptian national parliament is a fundamental reform needed to permit real progress toward the rule of law and democracy in Egypt;

(5) calls on the Government of Egypt to separate the apparatus of the National Democratic Party from the operations of government, to divest all government holdings in Egyptian media, and to end the government monopoly over printing and distribution of newspapers;

(6) calls on the Government of Egypt to repeal the 1977 emergency law which took effect in 1981, as promised by President Mubarak, and in the development of any future anti-terrorism legislation to allow peaceful, constitutional political activities, including public meetings and demonstrations, and to allow full parliamentary review of any such legislation;

(7) expresses disappointment over the failure of the Government of Egypt to ensure that the presidential election was free, fair, and transparent;

(8) calls on the Government of Egypt, in future elections, to—
(A) ensure supervision by the judiciary of the election process across the country and at all levels;
(B) ensure the presence of accredited representatives of all competing parties and independent candidates at polling stations and during the vote-counting; and
(C) allow local and international election monitors full access and accreditation;

(9) urges the President of the United States to take into account the progress achieved by the Government of Egypt in meeting the goals outlined in this resolution when determining—
(A) the type and nature of United States diplomatic engagement with the Government of Egypt; and
(B) the type and level of assistance to be requested for the Government of Egypt;

(10) given the responsibility of the Government of Egypt for the outcome of the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections, calls on the Government of Egypt not to use the strength of the Islamist opposition in Egypt to justify the failure of the Egyptian Government to comply with its international human rights obligations or to undertake the reforms to which it has committed; and

(11) urges the President and other officers of the Government of the United States to speak with unmistakable clarity in expressing the disappointment of the people and Government of the United States with respect to the behavior of the Government of Egypt during the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections.